While teaching ESL may be a 1 or 2 year stop for many teachers, some of us want to make a career in the ESL/EFL industry, so what are the career options available? Today we’ll take a look at some of the career options available in EFL.
International School
Many EFL/ESL teachers start their careers working either in a public school or at a
private language school after a few years, teachers may want to consider moving to an international school to teach. International schools offer better pay,benefits, time off, freedom in designing lessons and can often be a path to moving into a management or teacher development role. International schools are also a good path for teachers who would like to move into teaching a subjectother than English.
University
Teaching at a university can be a great next step for teachers looking to stay in the
classroom. Teaching at a university generally pays well, has a lower amount of teaching hours, longer vacations, and you also have more freedom in planning your lessons and in curriculum input. With this freedom in lesson planning and curriculum, comes a higher amount of work in preparing for classes and if you only taught prepared curriculums and have minimal lesson planning experience, this . Depending on the country, universities may have higher standards that you expect you to teach to and various ways to grade a teacher’s efficiency in the classroom, form student satisfaction to the average grade in your classes.
Curriculum Development
Maybe while teaching you found that you have a knack or love for curriculum development rather than teaching. ESL textbooks, theories and methods are constantly changing, in addition private language schools, especially in Asia or that operate on online platforms there is a huge demand for new curriculums or improving curriculums. These jobs can offer more stability then teaching jobs as they are typically not contract base and come with more “typical” benefits and schedules as they are often in western countries.
DELTA/CELTA Tutor
Developed an interest in teacher development and mentoring? Working as a CELTA, DELTA or even TEFL instructor is a great career consideration. This may be a part-time or full-time position with a language school, where you teach certification courses part of the time and other ESL classes as well. Or it could be a contract position with a language school or Cambridge English approved certification center and can be paired with other part-time positions or teaching independently.
IELTS/TOEFL Evaluator
My first teaching job involved helping students prepare for the TOEFL exam and
later I worked extensively with students getting ready for IELTS. There are a number of English proficiency exams and they use evaluators to administer these exams. Evaluators are typically contract workers and may only work part time, which makes this a job that can be partnered with another job such as CELTA tutor or teaching freelance.
Academic Coordinator
A natural move for many who want to stay in the ESL field is to move into management positions. Often working in a language school, teachers assume roles such as head teacher, especially in Asia which can provide a taste of what it’s like to work in a management position. Many language schools also have an academic coordinator, who spends little to no time in the classroom teaching, and focuses more on management activities of the school, teachers and curriculum.
Applied Linguistics
Applied linguistics covers job fields such as
speech pathology, lexicographer, speech therapist and copy editor among others. Again, these jobs are not typically contract base and are more common in western countries and come with typical hours and benefits of a job in the west.
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